


The Rule of Threes Raid

by Syrena_of_the_lake



Series: The Stone Gryphon [8]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, The Rat Patrol
Genre: F/M, Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 09:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4620429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Rat Patrol's mission is "to attack, harass and wreak havoc on Field Marshal Rommel's vaunted Afrika Korps." Susan's mission is a bit more complicated, as is her relationship with the desert. A story of daring and deception and of loyalties built on shifting sands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Widening Gyre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/gifts).



> This story is intended to fit within Rthstewart's Stone Gryphon story cycle, somewhere between "The Queen Susan in Tashbaan" and "Rat and Sword Go to War."
> 
> For those who are not familiar with the 1960s show Rat Patrol, a brief introduction: loosely based on the real-life Rats of Tobruk and the Long Range Desert Group, they are a group of three Americans and one British soldier who operated behind enemy lines during the North Africa campaign. Their frequent nemesis and occasional unlikely ally was Hauptmann (Captain) Hans Dietrich, an honorable German officer with whom they played a deadly game of cat and mouse.
> 
> Rth, I was overjoyed to find I had drawn you as a recipient! I hope you enjoy this tale of Susan's exploits in North Africa. It doesn't quite fit as snugly into your 'verse as I'd hoped. (I tried. I really did. I used timelines, notes, a crowbar and copies amounts of WD-40 and even so I think I bent your canon trying to make this fit. It's close, though, I swear – a sledgehammer might just do the trick.) I hope you will overlook the… shall we say, irregularities?
> 
> Enormous thanks to edenfalling for not only accomplishing the Herculean task of beta-reading this in record time, but especially for the helpful, insightful comments! This is a better story thanks to you.

**Prologue**

"Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time." - Paulo Coelho, _The Alchemist_

 

**Tunisia, March 1943**

Susan's teeth rattled in counterpoint to every jolt of the jeep. This was no way to travel. With a horse – even with a _camel_ , for Aslan's sake – one could be reasonably certain that it would not steer itself off a cliff. But this misbegotten lump of metal had no brain, no self-preservation instincts.

Much like its driver.

"Comfortable?" he shouted. She couldn't be sure because he was facing away from her, but she thought he was smiling under all the dirt and grime.

Susan did not wish to make a poor impression by giving that question the answer it deserved, so she said nothing. Her helmet knocked repeatedly against an ammo case, her shoulders were wedged next to the lunatic at the machine gun, and her knees kept bumping into a crate of explosives that she devoutly hoped were not shock-sensitive.

When Susan had learned French, jolting her way across North Africa was not what she'd had in mind.

"Bump coming–"

SLAM.

"… up."

Susan glared at the driver, who sounded entirely unrepentant. "Sorry, ma'am, we normally just say–"

"Tully!" The British gunner at her back barked a laugh. "That's no way to talk to a lady!"

Susan hardly heard him; she was busy mentally reciting every curse she could remember in French. She lingered over her favorites, savoring the syllables that compared an individual's intellectual or physical attributes to various kinds of cheese. This occupied her for some time.

Miss Carré had always commended Susan's extensive vocabulary.

Even so, the ranks of invectives and insults – however creative – were regrettably finite. And no matter how hard Susan tried not to dwell on it, the wind-scoured landscape stirred definite memories of another time and another place.

The desert was the shape and breadth of Susan's fear.

Every canyon echoed her greatest failures. Her helplessness in Tashbaan and then again in Washington, for all it was a desert of her own imagining. Now, like some prodigal bride, she had returned to this wasteland as if some part of her soul were drawn to desolation and barrenness.

For all Susan's determination, she could not muster the hope that this time would be any different. Much of her life, after all, had thus far been governed by the Rule of Threes.

* * *

 

**I. The widening gyre**

"Every army practices deception. If they don't, they can't win, and they know it."

\- General Wesley Clark, U.S. Army

_Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
_ _The falcon cannot hear the falconer_

\-  "The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats

 

**Bletchley Park, February 1943**

Colonel George Walker-Smythe nearly choked on his unlit cigar. "It's not nearly enough time," he protested.

Major al-Masri's face, usually grim, today seemed carved from stone. "The timetable is not ours."

"She is bound for France," the Colonel insisted. "Her training has only just begun!"

When he was not in uniform, private citizen Asim bin Kalil might have agreed with him. But it was Major al-Masri who had heard the briefings on Operation Mincemeat – and who had been tasked with finding other breadcrumbs to feed the Germans in support of that outrageous plan. "Hitler's eye is fixed on Sicily."

George snorted. "Anyone with an atlas is watching Sicily."

"We aim to change that."

George stared at him in astonishment. "By putting Susan in _Tunisia_? Her talents are wasted there! Besides, North Africa is nearly won." He had lost count of the number of times he'd heard other officers foolishly spout that phrase, and inwardly he was disgusted at himself for using it now.

Al-Masri was gracious enough not to comment on it. "Fully trained native French speakers are desperately needed in France. One more half-trained Englishwoman" – he paused over the word and the two men exchanged a significant look – "is not. At least," he amended, "not yet."

"But she is needed in Africa," said George dubiously.

"A clever, talented agent is needed in Africa. Someone with initiative, imagination and an innate grasp of deception. Who knows how to help people see what they want to see."

There was no doubt that Susan, the woman whose identity papers said she was nothing more than a girl, answered this description to the letter. Still, George felt a twisting in his gut. "But surely–"

"It must be a woman," interrupted al-Masri. "And she must speak French, but she must not speak it perfectly. Just as she must be an excellent actress, but she must not play the part flawlessly."

That was… not what he was expecting to hear. George chewed his cigar thoughtfully. The _why_ he could imagine. The real question was: "Why now?"

"At a certain time, certain papers will be discovered pointing to a certain conclusion. I am telling you none of this," said al-Masri pointedly. George nodded. Al-Masri studied him a moment before continuing. "There is a belief spreading among the German high command that any attack on Sicily would be only a feint. We want to reinforce this belief. The body of a British serviceman will wash ashore on Spain, a locked briefcase chained to his wrist. The Spanish government can be counted upon to pass the briefcase and its contents on to Germany. The papers inside will indicate a plan to bypass Sicily and push into the Balkans, smashing the airfields at Sardinia and moving into the underbelly of Europe through Greece."

Astounded, George set the cigar in his ashtray. "That is the most ludicrous plan I have ever heard." Al-Masri frowned at him. "I mean, the most ludicrous plan I _never_ heard."

"I am telling you this only because our operation must complement, not interfere with or in any way contradict, Mincemeat."

George grimaced. "Lovely name. Do I get a say in 'our' operation?"

Al-Masri ignored the comment as the idle grumbling it was. "Ideally, we'd send her through Cairo. Dudley Clarke is running the Mediterranean branch of the deception unit there."

"Clarke? Wasn't he arrested in Madrid…?" George trailed off uncomfortably.

Al-Masri had no such compunctions. "In women's clothing? Yes. His disguise, if it was such, was quite thorough – down to the brassiere, I believe."

George shifted in his chair. "Doesn't that concern you?"

"Not particularly." The major had the cheek to look amused. "If nothing else, the man pays attention to detail. But sending Susan through Cairo would require her to travel up the lines with an Army unit. And their organization and security, quite frankly, _does_ concern me."

George grunted. Reports had begun filtering down about the plague of orders, counter-orders and utter disorder that had swept through the American, British and French armies in North Africa. The tide seemed to have turned – but that had been said before, too. "I don't want her exposed to that kind of needless risk," he said.

"I agree." Al-Masri pulled out a map. "We have a unit operating behind enemy lines west of Gabés. A small commando group, quite successful. They should be able to insert her."

"Who's the contact?" asked George.

"Major Wilhelm Schmidt. Ostensibly one of ours, but he answers only to the highest bidder – he'll send her information straight up the German chain of command."

George knew his next question should be _what_. Strategy was needed here, not sentimentality. But it was such a damnably short time… "Can't it bloody well wait until after they have the body?"

"We have to lay the groundwork for Mincemeat," said al-Masri. "If all the publicity comes after the fact, it makes the main event itself seem suspect." His gaze held no reproach, but George knew he was behaving obstinately. Still. Susan was practically his daughter's age, at least on paper.

"How much will you tell her?"

Al-Masri sat back in his chair as if, with that question, the battle had already been won. "Nothing at all about Mincemeat. But she must know the information she is carrying is false, in case she has to improvise."

George pounded the table. "You go too far, al-Masri! Are you suggesting that if the girl is caught, she should withstand torture to knowingly protect _false information_?"

"Not at all," the Major said seriously. "If caught, she should hold out precisely long enough to make them believe she is _trying_ to protect the fact that the information is false."

George took out another cigar and bit down hard. "What would she be carrying?"

"Tidal charts for the coast of Sicily." Al-Masri steepled his fingers. "Once the Germans have seen the Mincemeat papers, this will take on new significance. The Abwehr will see it as an attempt to make them believe Sicily is the target while our real intentions lie elsewhere."

"Reverse psychology," George muttered. "It just might work. At the worst, they will take Susan's charts at face value and merely prepare for a nonexistent raid. Make them jumpy."

al-Masri nodded. "And at best, they will take it as further evidence of their own preconceptions – if Sicily is a feint, then they will expect a campaign of deception. Knowing the information is false will reinforce their false thinking."

"And get them thinking _any_ invasion of Sicily is nothing more than a distraction."

"Precisely. They will not make their strategy on the weight of this alone, of course, but it will be one more coin on the scales."

George shook his head as if to clear it. "Whose plan is this, anyway?"

"Montagu. They say he has a corkscrew mind," al-Masri offered.

George spat the end of the cigar onto the floor. "I always took you for more of a machete man."

"I do prefer a knife," al-Masri admitted. "Still, a knife can be twisted, can it not?"

In an abrupt release of tension, both men laughed. It was a morbid joke, perhaps, but was there any other kind in wartime?

 

Only a few days later, the woman in question stood in the office before her mentors. She unconsciously adopted her most regal pose and fixed the Colonel with a stern look. "The preparations for France have just begun, and you want to send me to the middle of the desert."

Walker-Smythe cleared his throat, but it was al-Masri who spoke first. "Have you ever been to the desert, Susan?"

Her gaze sharpened. "There is no possible way I could have been," she responded carefully.

Al-Masri smiled slightly. "A good answer," he said, "but that is not what I asked."

Susan weighed the implications for a long moment. Walker-Smythe nodded at her. "I have," she said in a low voice.

Al-Masri seemed to expect this answer. "And how did you find it?"

"I hated it," she answered bluntly.

"Good."

Startled, Susan opened her mouth to ask why, and then thought better of it. It would not do to open _that_ line of questioning in regards to her own history.

Al-Masri explained anyway. "It will be part of your first cover. You are a Frenchwoman from Casablanca. You had an affair with a German officer, and now that the city is behind Allied lines you find yourself a pariah. You fled Morocco, and are trying to reach him in Tunisia."

"That is absurd." Susan's voice was flat. "Who would believe a woman crossing the front lines to find her lover?"

"German, Italian… all the soldiers will help you," the Colonel offered. "Every man wants to believe a woman would follow him halfway around the world."

Such a specious argument from two men she profoundly admired – they couldn't possibly be serious. Could they? "Sir, I respectfully refuse this assignment." She waited, but neither man spoke. Susan winced. They were. "I cannot live such a cover. I would endanger the mission."

Finally, the Colonel spoke. "Why?"

When Susan was most upset, she always reverted to her first persona – the royal queen. "I would never follow a man into the desert," she said in a firm voice that brooked no argument. "Not for anything or anyone." _Never again_ , she finished to herself.

The Colonel hesitated and looked at al-Masri before assenting. "Very well. Do you know first aid?"

Susan nodded. How many battles had she spent tending the wounded and dying until Lucy could arrive with the precious cordial? "I do."

"We'll make you a nurse, then. That should still give you some measure of safety behind German lines."

"Is that what this is about? Sending me to North Africa to keep me _safe_?" Susan's voice rose. "I did not join the SOE to stay safe, Colonel. That is hardly the most constructive use of my time and talents."

"On the contrary." Al-Masri held up his hand. "We believe you are uniquely suited to this mission."

Contrite, Susan sat back in her chair.

"Your cover story will have three layers." The Colonel held up a finger. "The, ah, love story," he said with a sour look at al-Masri, "was only the first. Anyone could pull that off. And we expected any reasonably intelligent opponent to see through it. But the nurse will do just as well, I suppose."

"The second layer," al-Masri put in, "is where your unique talents come into play. You were working in a hotel in Casablanca and found some papers a careless American officer left behind."

"Will they believe that?" asked Susan. "That's a horrendous breach of security."

"It's happened before," the Colonel said sourly. "Some idiot left secret papers in his breast pocket and sent the jacket out to be cleaned."

Indignation made her voice sharp. "That is unconscionable!"

"But useful," al-Masri cut her off. "You are an opportunistic woman trying to earn passage out of Africa. When you found the papers, you knew the Germans would pay well, so you set out in search of an officer you knew from Casablanca, with whom you had an… understanding."

"And concocted the star-crossed lover story," Susan finished, her voice dry. "How imaginative of me."

The Colonel coughed around his cigar.  

"I trust the nurse's story will serve our purposes here as well," said Susan. Without waiting for answer, she continued. "And the third layer?"

"How did you know there were three?" Al-Masri seemed genuinely curious.

"The Rule of Threes," Walker-Smythe interjected. He glanced at Susan. "One incident is an anomaly, two are a coincidence. Three, a conspiracy."

Susan jerked her head in asset and said nothing.

"Indeed." Al-Masri sipped his tea, which must have gone cold long ago and could not have been much more than bitter water to begin with. "The third layer is both a conspiracy and closest to the truth. You are a spy sent to deliver this false information to the Germans."

Alarmed, Susan stared at him. _False information?_ "Why would you tell me that?" It violated every need-to-know principle that had been drilled into her. "What if I am captured?"

"You're a smart girl," said the Colonel obliquely.

This labyrinthine thinking was not her strong suit; Edmund was the one with a corkscrew mind. So Susan approached the problem as a wolf following a scent. Prey would double back, cross its own trail, climb trees or swim. Edmund might live for these sorts of puzzles, but Susan was the one who had learned to hunt with wolves.

"If I'm captured, the Germans will know they have a second-rate spy with false information, pretending to be a French traitor or mercenary, traveling with various units as a nurse." She tapped her fingers on the desk. "It has enough layers to seem plausible. The false information must be destined to prod them into something," she surmised. "Like poking a grasshopper on the back to make it jump sideways."

Al-Masri nodded in approval. "An interesting metaphor. Very apt."

"So you need me to make mistakes."

"Subtle, believable mistakes. Yes."

"Do you need me to be captured?" Susan kept her voice even.

Walker-Smythe spat out his cigar. "Absolutely not!"

"They'll want you operating in the open, where they can keep an eye on you and pick up the breadcrumbs you drop," said al-Masri.

How reassuring.

"And we have a man there," added al-Masri. "Someone who can be trusted if you need help."

"How will I find him?"

"If need be, he will find you. Proof of his identity will be provided if necessary."

Susan hesitated. But really, what choice did she have? It would be months before she could be of any use in France. And if not her, then someone else – probably a young woman who truly was little more than a girl – would have to go in her place. She could not allow that.

And Susan could do the job better.

The desert had ever been her adversary, but perhaps for once she could use that to her advantage.

"When do I leave?"

 

As it turned out, her departure was not quite as imminent as the Colonel had made it sound. Susan had time for several weeks of training – albeit intense, even harried courses that left her with little chance to see Tebbitt, al-Masri or anyone else. She half-suspected this was by design.

Two days before she was to leave, Tebbitt stole her away to his jeep, where they shared a cigarette and a long-overdue embrace… among other things.

As Susan wiped her lipstick off the Wing Commander's cheek, he smiled sadly at her. " _What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?_ "

Unnerved by his words, which sounded so ominously like her own in Tashbaan, Susan pulled away from him.

He blinked at her. "It's T.S. Eliot. The Wasteland – haven't you read it?"

Susan let out her breath. The parallels, already too close for comfort, had her nerves on edge. Tebbitt should not be made to suffer for it. " _April is the cruelest month_ ," she quoted and shrugged apologetically. "That's all I know."

"Just as well. It's depressing."

Susan laughed shortly. "With a title like 'The Wasteland'? I'd never have guessed." She traced the line of his jaw. "Don't we have better things to do with our time?"

"Mrs. Caspian, I thought you'd never ask."

They did indeed find ways to pass the time. And two short days later, the night was black and Susan was on a plane with a parachute strapped to her back.

 

**Near the Calormen-Archenland Border, 1002**

The first time Susan saw the desert, it was springtime.

"Do not let appearances deceive you, Majesty," warned Wrasse. "The desert is an inhospitable place, especially for humans."

Lambert sniffed the wind. "It does not bother the Calormenes overly much. They are near."

Susan bent to caress the delicate petals of an unfamiliar flower. They felt like the thinnest parchment, or the fragile layers of a wasp nest. "It is beautiful, though."

Wrasse looked at the flower. "Yes, Your Majesty." The Panther's voice was expressionless, but her ears flicked back in disapproval.

Lambert glanced sideways at Susan in what she had learned was the Wolf's version of a sly grin. "We could bring some of these flowers home for King Edmund. Perhaps they would not make him sneeze."

Wrasse stiffened, but Susan only laughed. "Even if they only flower three days a year, that would still be too much for my Most Royally Allergic brother!"

"Are you talking about me?" Peter cantered up and dismounted smoothly.

As always, Dalia was at his side. Wrasse took the Cheetah's presence as cue to go stalk the perimeter. Cats in general were not fond of sharing space – even in the open desert. Although to be fair, everything seemed smaller whenever Peter was present. He had a way of taking up space even in the vastness of the desert.

"Not everything is about you, High King," murmured Dalia when she judged Wrasse was out of earshot. The Cheetah had a wicked sense of humor. Wrasse did not.

Peter grinned. "Really? I'd never noticed." From anyone else, it would sound arrogant. Only Peter could get in on the joke even when he was the butt of it. Susan would have envied him that, but it was just so – so _Peter_ – that she could not begrudge him for it.

"I was talking about Edmund," she said. "Do you think he'd be allergic to desert flowers?"

"Only one way to find out!" said Peter cheerfully. "Who wants to carry a cactus home?" Susan's mare did not take kindly to the suggestion, but Peter expertly dodged out of biting range.

The search party – Susan adamantly refused to call it a hunting party, no matter it might come to that – was comprised solely of Beasts, humans and horses. The Centaurs, Satyrs and Dwarves were too easily identified as Narnians even from afar, but humans and horses could enter Calormen without it seeming like an incursion. They would take every precaution to remain unnoticed. However, should their party be discovered, the Beasts could leave their monarchs and melt away into the desert – a plan which had raised both hackles and vociferous objections. But to do otherwise would imperil the tentative diplomatic relations with Calormen. Narnia could ill afford another war.

Peter had likened the rebuilding of Narnia to a bridge, beginning with the footings and many more technical terms that Susan and Edmund quickly adopted for their Rat and Crow code. Peter was supremely unamused when he found out that "truss" now meant "impending princess." (It may have also implied a corset; Edmund's codes were always _very_ specific.)

Susan did not like the metaphor of the bridge. It sounded too much like she and her siblings were trying to construct a country from scratch rather than restore what the Narnians had once had, before the Witch. Susan thought of the process as pushing a rock uphill – an endless, tiring task that absorbed so much of your effort that it became difficult to remember the purpose, until suddenly the stone was rolling downhill all by itself and it was time for a new task.

The stone had just started to gather momentum, Susan thought, when the latest crisis reared its head.

So many Minotaurs had sided with the Witch that many Narnians now feared the whole race. It was an unjust prejudice that the Four had fought to change. They had even hired a Minotaur as Cook at Cair Paravel, and had rejoiced to see that she was treated with all due deference for her station, skills and sheer size.

But now reports had arrived of a Minotaur running wild and savage near Archenland's southern border. King Lune had given Peter his blessing to try to retrieve the creature peacefully if they could – or kill him mercifully if he was beyond all reason or help.

They had tracked him to the Winding Arrow, across the river and into Calormen. Their task had become exponentially more dangerous with this new threat of discovery. And it was all the more vital that they remove the Minotaur as quickly and quietly as possible: the repercussions if he attacked Calormenes were horrific to contemplate. 

Suddenly, Lambert's head came up and his tail stiffened. "Men," he said.

"Plural?" Susan's brow furrowed. She reached for her bow.

"And horses. Several."

Peter nodded to Dalia. The Cheetah sped off, a golden blur. Wrasse immediately took her place, almost shoving Peter into the shelter of a large rock. It was an oddly sculpted formation, like an ice cube tipped on edge and melting away at the corners. A hollow at the base let Peter scramble underneath it and almost out of sight.

"Lambert, the horses," hissed Susan. Her Guard whirled on the poor beasts, who were already quivering with the sudden tension. He snapped at the heels of Peter's mount. The horse bolted, and Susan's mare followed. She glanced at the Wolf. "I hope you know you'll be the one rounding them up," she whispered.

Lambert crouched next to her, bodily pressing Susan further underneath the rock. The hilt of Peter's sword dug into her side. Lambert's ears lay almost flat. Susan obeyed the signal and fell silent.

Wrasse crept so her black body was between daylight and the two humans. With luck, the Calormene patrol would see only shadow. Otherwise, they would have time to see very little else before the Panther leaped upon them.

 

**Tunisia, March 1943**

A particularly violent lurch jolted Susan from her musings. The British sergeant cupped his hands to his mouth. "Almost there!" he called over the roar of motors and the wind.

_Thank Aslan._

"Almost" turned out to be another interminable twenty minutes of jarring, bumping, scraping and several heart-stopping jumps across small gullies. Then, finally, the noise died and the two jeeps crawled to a halt.

"We're stopping," said the driver unnecessarily. He took off his helmet, revealing a shock of blonde hair that was surely too long to be regulation. Without the driving goggles, he looked even younger than Susan had first thought.

She struggled upright, uncurling stiffened limbs, and accepted his hand in clambering out of the jeep. She hadn't needed assistance in dismounting anything since she was just a girl, but her feet felt like rubber.

"Welcome to paradise," called the American sergeant, striding over from the other jeep to shake her hand. Despite the Australian slouch hat, Susan would have known he was an American from the handshake alone, even without the accent. Or the incredibly straight teeth. "They pay big bucks for this in Miami, you know."

Behind him, the two drivers rolled their eyes in unison.

"Régine Dubois," Susan introduced herself. The Colonel had done her the honor of allowing her to choose her first name. He had given her an odd look when she settled on Régine, but had approved her choice. It was just one more secret for Susan to carry, but this one warmed her from within.

"Right. I'm Troy, this is Moffitt –" he introduced the handsome, dark-haired British sergeant, "Tully," he pointed to her blonde driver, "and Hitch." The last man blew a magnificent bubblegum bubble and nodded amiably. He, too, was young. "Hitch, help her get settled. We'll talk over coffee."

Hitch took his red cap off and ruffled his hair. Sand cascaded onto his shoulders. "Welcome to the Rat Patrol, ma'am." Susan smiled at him reflexively, and filed the name away to reflect upon later.

"You'll like the Sarge. He's a good guy," Hitch said. "Just a warning – the coffee's kinda, well…"

No matter how horrible it was, coffee was likely a luxury for these men. "As long as it's liquid."

"More or less," he said with a grin. "You can't really tell the sand from the grounds." He deposited her single bag inside a small but sturdy tent and saluted before closing the tent flap behind him.

She knew they had to be wondering about her. A woman alone, dropped by parachute behind enemy lines in the remote desert – but so far they had proven too professional or too busy to ask. Susan took advantage of the few minutes of solitude to smooth her hair, take a deep breath and gather her wits. The past few hours had been a chaotic sequence of takeoffs, landings and harried scurrying away from patrols.

The easy part, she knew, was over. Now she had to gain the trust of these competent soldiers and ask them to help her to the nearest German-held town.

 

"You want to do what?" Troy and Moffitt exchanged incredulous looks.

Susan held her temper. It was a mad plan, truly – she did not fault them for their reactions. "I need to get to the nearest village with a strong German military presence." She sipped her gritty coffee and kept her face impassive.

"Why?" Moffitt lounged on the floor of the tent. He seemed to belong here, Susan reflected, even more than the others. He moved in the desert with an ease that reminded her of young Prince Cor.

Susan shrugged apologetically. "The details are classified. I have information to pass to a double-agent. He's a major with one of the local outfits. He'll find me, I just need a place to start and make my presence known."

"Listen, Dubois –"

"Régine," she interrupted. "Please."

"Régine." Troy looked uncomfortable. "The nearest town that meets your… criteria… is Azahara. The man in charge is Captain Dietrich. We know him, we've dealt with him before. He's nobody's fool. The second you step foot in that town he'll have you under surveillance."

"Good," she said in approval.

Tully, who had been watching the conversation like a tennis spectator, nudged Hitch's elbow. "Hey, you think I left her out in the sun too long?"

Susan leaned forward, inviting Troy's confidence. "I cannot give you details, Sergeant. But it is imperative that the Germans be aware of my movements. If your Captain Dietrich is as competent as you say he is, that will make my job easier. You'll have to trust me on that."

Troy's eyes narrowed. "Easier," he echoed. "Moffitt, she's one of yours – can't you talk some sense into her?"

Moffitt studied Susan. "Is there any point in my trying?" he asked.

Susan gave the man a point for perspicacity. She tried to let him down gently. "You have your mission, gentlemen. I have mine."

Troy hesitated. "If you get into trouble – and I mean real trouble," he said slowly, "you may be able to trust him, at least up to a point."

"Who, Dietrich?" She raised an eyebrow, skeptical.

Moffitt stepped in. "The S.S. stormed into a village recently. They not only violated a treaty, but they also abducted two neutrals and stole the entire supply of typhus serum. Dietrich captured me to exchange for the serum, but the S.S. commander was mad. Kept raving about how all was fair in war," he drawled. "All very melodramatic, I assure you."

Susan eyed Moffitt, who was surprisingly cavalier about the whole experience. "And this is supposed to make me trust him?"

"Dietrich left a trail for us." Troy shook his head. A wry smile tugged at his lips. "Led us straight to them. And… this is going to sound crazy, but we think he killed the S.S. commander."

Susan's eyebrows shot up. "Tell me everything."

Troy leaned forward. "There were three things. One: Dietrich left a Frenchman behind to tell us the whole story. Two: a water bottle, conveniently left at a crossroads, pointing the way. Three: someone shot that S.S. officer just in time."

Susan looked at Moffitt. "He was going to kill me and the nurse," he affirmed. "And then he was shot. Not long after Dietrich pulled out – just long enough."

"So you tell me," said Troy. "Coincidence?"

So it was to be the Rule of Threes again. "I quite see your point."

Moffitt nodded complacently. "So while you're there, see if you can find out what kind of champagne Dietrich likes, won't you? I owe him a bottle."

The men chuckled, their easy camaraderie evident in every glance and movement.

Trust, thought Susan, was such a fragile thing. How very unexpected to find it growing between enemies, here in the desert … a place where even friends might turn on each other.

 

**Near the Calormen-Archenland Border, 1002**

They spent all night huddled beneath the overhang of the massive rock. Susan was grateful for the warm fur pressed all around her. Intellectually, she had known that the desert was cold at night, but in no way had she anticipated the bone-chilling wind that penetrated even their little hollow.

The Calormene patrol had camped just on the opposite side. The Narnians could smell the fire, and whatever the Calormenes were cooking was making Lambert drool. Susan absently wiped her sleeve.

"If they don't move out by morning," murmured Peter, "we may have to give them a push."

Lambert lifted his head and Susan pursed her lips in mute answer. She tapped Peter's arm in the rhythm that meant _we-understand-and-it-will-be-done_. They had used this maneuver before: Lambert would steal away, hide himself and begin howling. By moving around the perimeter of the camp, he would imitate multiple wolves – and when Susan joined him in harmony, the illusion of a hunting pack would be complete.

Of course, they had never tried this trick against experienced Calormene soldiers. 

Fortunately, there was no need to test it now. The moment the first blush of pink tinged the dunes in the east, Lambert slunk out from the recess. The snores of the Calormenes were thunderous, and Wrasse had been muttering dire predictions about trickery and knavery since midnight. But Lambert came trotting back, his tongue lolling from his mouth in a wolfish grin.

"They were really sleeping. I could have stolen the chicken bones from their fire," he chuckled. His voice was not pitched to carry, but Susan flicked his ear all the same. The Wolf trotted so close by her side that his fur brushed the back of her hand.

Susan could not imagine ever traveling anywhere without him.

By the time the sun crested the horizon, the Narnians were already out of sight and earshot of the patrol. Dalia had returned with the horses; she had spent the night watching and prowling just out of sight, but seemed every bit as fresh as their mounts. And she brought news: she had found splintered bones and hoofprints marking the Minotaur's trail.

"So tell me, dear brother," said Susan, striving for jocularity. "How does one capture a Minotaur?"

"Is this a joke?" Lambert's tail wagged. "Or a riddle?" Her Guard had an uncommon love of riddles. It was probably one of the reasons he got on so well with the Crows.

"Build a bull pen," suggested Peter.

"Take it by the horns," put in Lambert.

Dalia chuckled. "Or put a ring in its nose –"

"And lead it out to pasture," finished Peter.

It was all highly impolitic, and Susan regretted having started the conversation in the first place. She supposed it was like gallows humor, in a way, and tried to pay it no mind. Lambert picked up on her mood and fell silent.

"I know!" Peter grinned. "Build a labyrinth. Am I right, Su?"

But the joke fell flat. "I don't think they know that story, Peter." To be honest, Susan could not quite recall the details either. The myths of her homeland – or what she could remember of them – were a confusing tangle of memories seen as if through a fog. "Why don't you tell us," she suggested, "to pass the time."

Peter cleared his throat. His voice had deepened since they came to Narnia, and was developing a resonance that well befit a king. "Come now Gentle Beasts and Daughter of Eve that you might hear the Tale of the Minotaur's Labyrinth. To you I tell it, as I learned it from, ah, my elders, back generation upon generation. The Tale of the Minotaur's Labyrinth was told…" here Peter stumbled, and Susan realized she was not alone in feeling ever more distanced from her former life. Should it worry her, she wondered, that she did not miss the memories that were veiled from her?

"It was told in civilizations of old, in cave, castle and home and – and classroom, that we might remember and heed it. Good Beasts and Creatures of Narnia," Peter continued, his voice regaining its strength now that he was on firmer ground, "you shall stop and listen with your sensitive hearts so that all may know the Tale of the Minotaur's Labyrinth and its lesson. So harken to me now. It begins thus…"

And as they walked through the desert, Peter told of the birth of a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man, the son of a queen and the punishment of a king who had offended the gods. The king Minos imprisoned this solitary Minotaur in a labyrinth, which was constructed with malicious care so that the Minotaur could never escape – and neither could any prisoners or sacrifices condemned as the Minotaur's prey. Theseus, a young hero determined to slay the monster, met and fell in love with the king's daughter, Ariadne. This clever lady gifted the hero with a thread for him to unravel as he navigated the labyrinth, so he could retrace his path and exit the dread maze upon slaying his foe.

"Thus was the Minotaur slain, the labyrinth traversed, and the hero saved by the foresight of the Princess Ariadne." Peter finished with a flourish and a bow to his sister.

"A pity I haven't any thread," Susan said lightly.

"You have your bow string, my lady!" jested Peter. "And your arrows to point the way. Surely that is enough to conquer any labyrinth."

"You sound like Leszi!" laughed Susan. "When in doubt, shoot it or stab it."

Peter muttered something terribly rude about "Sir Hairy the Horrid" which Susan pretended not to hear.

"I do wonder why Lucy persists in asking him to teach her swordplay. I worry about his influence," she confessed. "And his language," she added with a sharp look at Peter.

He pretended to quail under her censure. "Faith, good lady, I repent!" he laughed. "But I wouldn't worry too much, Su. Leszi generally behaves himself around Lucy – or maybe around Briony, it's hard to tell. And I'm sure he'd be happy to spar with you –"

"No, thank you," she demurred. "I do not enjoy swordplay like the rest of you. I much prefer bow and knife."

Serious now, Peter nodded. "I still think you would benefit from sparring with others – perhaps with the Dryads. You could use a staff instead of sword."

Susan swallowed her immediate objections and considered the advantages. A glance at Lambert was telling: his ears were pricked and his tail lifted high. Unlike the archery range, in the ring the Wolf could fight by her side. "I will consider it," Susan promised.

Peter smiled and was about to answer when a bellow cut through the thin desert air. Susan had an arrow nocked to the bowstring before the last echo died. The Narnians whirled around as one, the Cats and Wolf in front and Monarchs behind. And then they saw him: a hulking, horned shadow crouched just a few yards ahead.

Dalia and Wrasse began moving in opposite directions to encircle the Minotaur. Lambert stayed near, for Susan was vulnerable to close-quarters attack when both hands were occupied with bow and arrow.

Peter readied his sword and raised his voice. "Minotaur! I am your King. If you are in distress, We will help you. But We cannot allow you to harm innocent travelers."

The Minotaur raised its shaggy head. His fur was matted; cuts covered his torso. Susan could have wept when she looked in his eyes. They burned like a fever – all heat and no life. He growled wordlessly.

_Sweet Aslan_ , Susan cried in her heart, _can you not help him?_ She desperately sought words of hope and healing, but they fled like sparrows before the hawk. "Please!" Her voice broke. Susan nudged her mount forward. Lambert, ears flat, kept his position just in front of her. After only a few feet, her horse balked. "Please," implored Susan, "let us help you."

For a moment, the Minotaur met her gaze. His pupils were dilated, the whites of his eyes shot with red. The pain and despair in those eyes took her breath away. In that moment, Susan saw a flash of reason. And then the Minotaur roared in fury, and charged.

It all happened so quickly.

The Minotaur shrugged off Dalia's leap and bashed the Panther Wrasse aside. Peter charged and was nearly unseated when the Minotaur lunged at his horse, goring its flank with one horn.

And he kept running unerringly straight for Susan. Still she could not move. For how could she inflict more pain upon this tormented soul?

He had almost reached her when Lambert leapt for the Minotaur's throat. The Wolf hung there, fastened for a long moment, as Susan remained mesmerized by those haunted eyes. And then Lambert lost his grip, fell to the desert floor where he was terrifyingly vulnerable –

– and Susan finally loosed the arrow.

Its flight was true, and the Minotaur fell to its knees. The killing blow was Peter's, and Susan felt a moment of sickening relief that she did not have to let fly a second arrow.

She almost fell dismounting as she rushed to her Guard. "I am well," he reassured her despite the blood on his coat. They both knew he could easily have been killed. _And it would have been my fault_ , Susan thought.

As it was, she had traded one life for another. The Minotaur who longed so fiercely for death that he might have killed them all in pursuit of it, in exchange for her beloved Guard. The gash in Lambert's side was shallow, and the blood clotted quickly.

The rent in Susan's soul, she feared, would not be so easily mended.

 

**Tunisia, March 1943**

_She dreamed of a Rat creeping across the pitted stonework of a parapet. She came to the end of the wall and gazed out over nothingness: a long drop, and the desert waste. She gathered herself, ran to the edge and leaped–_

Susan awoke, heart pounding. Sergeant Troy knelt by her bedroll, his hand covering her mouth. "It's time. Let's shake it."

Susan shook off the dream and packed her things. Medical supplies, small rations of dried food and a filled bottle of water – all marked as belonging to the German army. Moffitt, dressed as a Wermacht soldier, would drive a captured truck on the pretense of bringing medical supplies to the front, and Susan would be his passenger. Posing as a Red Cross agent would have imperiled that organization's efforts throughout the war, so Susan remained merely a French nurse, fleeing the Allied armies and trying to render what aid she could to the Axis defenders.

As they planned it, the truck would overturn in a gulley not far from Azahara. The Rat Patrol would pick up Moffitt and leave Susan to make her way alone, having burned the truck and supposedly buried the driver.

The tale of her courage and miraculous survival would be carried from unit to unit, and so reach the ears of her contact. This flimsy cover would be enough to satisfy people with small imaginations. Equally important, it would also be sufficient to intrigue the suspicious mind.

"Ready?" asked Moffitt. He hoisted her bag into the truck.

For a moment, Susan was filled with doubt. But this was the Rat Patrol. What clearer sign could she ask for? Regardless of her misgivings, she was meant for this mission.

And so Queen Susan – codename Rat, alias Régine Dubois – would go once more into the desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In their discussion, al-Masri and Walker Smythe refer to several real-life events: Dudley Clarke really was arrested in Madrid in women's clothing, and a serviceman really did leave secret papers in a jacket and sent it out to be dry-cleaned (actually, the full story is even stranger: the papers were used to write a receipt for another customer!), and - most important - Ewen Montagu helped plan Operation Mincemeat. Yes, they really planted information (including a supporting cast of documents like fake bills, love letters and ticket stubs) on a corpse to be carefully washed ashore in Spain, where German spies would be sure to find it. Ben Macintyre tells the whole story in his book "Operation Mincemeat," which is a fascinating look at the "corkscrew minds" who cooked up this bizarre plan.


	2. The Deception of the Thrush

"No plan survives contact with the enemy."

\- Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox

 

_Footfalls echo in the memory_  
_Down the passage which we did not take […]_  
_[…] Into our first world, shall we follow  
_ _The deception of the thrush?_

\- T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton" (from _The Four Quartets_ )

 

**Tunisia, March 1943**

Susan never understood why Peter called the desert "clean." Oh, she could appreciate its stark beauty, the brightness of the stars in the thin air, their sparkle almost reflecting in the sand. And by day, the way sky met earth in a shimmering haze that obscured the horizon. But Susan had been walking for hours, and she was choking on dust. Her face and hair and clothes were coated in it. Sand was _everywhere_.

Despite the canteen of water, which was now less than half full, her body was almost too water-starved even to sweat. Not even the trickles of blood from her cracked lips were enough to moisten her tongue. Every bit of exposed skin was raw from the wind and burned by the sun.

She had never been sunburned in Narnia.

Susan wished Peter were there in her place. He'd have loved the dust, the tumbled Roman ruins, the hard ground and the scorching sun. Peter loved everything about the desert, except for the camels. Not even her great-hearted brother could love those ill-tempered, spitting, kicking beasts (no matter how great their affection for him).

Only there were no camels here, nor jeeps. The Rat Patrol had left her near dawn, having brought her as close to the village as they dared. Surely a German patrol would find her soon.

But for now, and for the first time in her memory, Susan was utterly alone.

No brothers, no sister, no Guard. No Dryads or Crows listening in the trees, no mother in the next room, no small creatures scurrying. No one at all except Susan and the harsh sun.

Despite the heat, she shivered.

**Telmar, 1014**

The negotiations had begun smoothly, but would-be suitors had already begun trailing her through the corridors. And now the Calormene Prince, whom Lambert had unkindly referred to as A Bad Rash, was seated next to her at breakfast.

At least he could make grammatical conversation.

"Have you ever seen the sunrise over the Rock of Talaan, Queen Susan?" Prince Rabadash bit delicately into a strawberry. He picked out his fruit by hand, ignoring the silver cutlery set by his plate. Susan found it refreshing.

"I have never been a guest in Calormen," she responded smoothly, "and so have not had the pleasure of watching the sunrise there." She deftly avoided lying straight out about the night she and Peter had once spent within Calormen's borders, huddled beneath that very rock after a nearly disastrous mission in the early days of their reign. It was true that she had not had the pleasure of watching the sunrise – they had fled at first light.

The prince's dark eyes grew unfocused. "Verily, the sun does cast its golden rays until the rock seems aflame with light and melts like a candle under the flame. But the illumined Rock of Talaan is but a pebble, and the sunrise but a pale lamp," he continued, and Susan sighed.

The syntax varied, but it seemed this prince was just like the others. As Willa would say, much wind in the sails but a hole in the hull.

"…and the fiery colors are naught but shadows without the music of the wild thrush."

Susan blinked. "The thrush, my lord?"

Prince Rabadash smiled at her. "It is as one of the poets has said: 'The docile dove and fierce hawk alike may be called to a fist, but the wise thrush remains in her thicket untamed.'"

Their gazes locked, and Susan felt something stir within her. Untamed, undominated, unfettered. Could such a fate be hers? Could she secure both Narnia's future and a measure of happiness for herself? "I am pleased to hear it," she managed, "for the thrush is also a Narnian bird, and I know her well."

"Might she fly among the brambles along the paths that encircle this very castle?"

Susan recognized the opening gambit, and her eyes sparkled at the challenge. "It may well be so. Would you consent to accompany me, Prince Rabadash, as we look for her?"

Daring much, the Calormene prince took her hand and placed it on his arm. "Truly have the poets said that a bird on the branch may sing to the world of desires that our hearts hold in secret confidence. By all means, my lady, let us away to follow the thrush."

 

**Tunisia, March 1943**

When the Germans found her, Susan was properly dazed and stumbling. They didn't even backtrack her trail, but sped her directly back to the village. She hardly noticed the jolting of the half-track.

Azahara was little more than a cluster of low-slung, thick-walled stone buildings, their once white plaster cracked and crumbling. German tents draped with camouflage netting filled the square except for an open space around a single well. The half-track lurched to a stop in what might once have been a courtyard.

In that moment, Susan wanted nothing more than someone to fuss over her, to wash the sand from her hair and cool her blistered lips.

Instead, a German officer stepped out of a tent. He was tall, lean and inevitably tanned. He walked up to the half-track and gazed up at Susan with dark eyes. Wordlessly he offered Susan his hand. She allowed him to balance her as she climbed awkwardly to the ground.

The driver said something brief in German. Susan only caught the words _French_ , _woman_ and _lost_ , but she could not tell whether he was merely relaying her story or calling it into question.

Susan pulled her tattered shawl more tightly around her shoulders. "Please, sir, do you speak French?" she ventured in that language. " _Sprechen Sie_ _Französisch_?" she added in stumbling German.

" _Oui._ I am Hauptmann Hans Dietrich," the officer introduced himself in French. He took off his hat. "Welcome to Azahara, _mademoiselle_."

"Hauptmann," she greeted him politely.

So this was the famous Dietrich whom the Rats held in such high regard as an opponent, and to whom Sergeant Troy had told her to entrust her life, if all else failed. Susan could not understand how he placed so much faith in the honor of an enemy. But she did believe Troy on one count: Dietrich was not to be underestimated.

He did not ask her any questions, but led her to the blessed shade of a tent. He gave her his own canteen of water. Susan forced herself to sip slowly. " _Merci_ ," she whispered.

As her strength returned, Susan wove her desperate tale with all the flourish of a Calormene storyteller. How she had fled the Americans in Casablanca, how she had crossed into Tunisia with a German unit, the battles she had witnessed and the wounded she had tended. How she had volunteered to return to the front with much-needed medical supplies. How, after the truck had crashed, she had buried the driver's body and burned the truck to keep the supplies from falling into enemy hands. It sounded like the plot of some American movie; Susan buried her own dismay at the melodramatic tale pouring from her lips. Maybe the lover's story would have been better after all.

Through it all, Dietrich remained silent. He fetched a plate of fruit for her, dates and a few plump tangerines that Susan devoured with geniune gratitude.

"You have been through quite an ordeal, _mademoiselle_ ," Dietrich finally said. His French was fluent, though there was an odd clipped quality to his words. "Are you injured?"

Susan shook her head. "Just tired," she said. Her voice was hoarse and her weariness unfeigned. 

"Then allow me to see you settled. Tomorrow, if you are well, you may assist the medic. We have many wounded soldiers after an engagement with some... vermin in the desert." His dark eyes watched her closely, and Susan was careful to betray no response. "Very well. Until tomorrow, _mademoiselle_."

Susan murmured her thanks and allowed another soldier to escort her away. She could feel the German Captain's eyes following her.

The subsequent days passed in dreary monotony. She slept on a cot in a storeroom of nonessential supplies. If indeed it was a test to see if she would steal or sabotage anything, it was a poorly designed trap: there was nothing there worth stealing. By day she lost herself in the routine of winding bandages, applying bandages, changing bandages, and winding more bandages. She helped a toothless Arab woman and her shy daughter wash linens, change linens and, yes, more bandages.

She stopped tensing whenever she saw a German uniform.

Occasionally the soldiers would race to their trucks and speed out into the desert, sometimes followed by an explosion and always followed by more wounded. Always, there were more bandages. Always, she was aware of Captain Dietrich's gaze.

Susan deliberately ignored the insignias the soldiers wore. She learned each wounded man's first name and called him by it. She bathed and bandaged and spoke soothing words in French, which many of the soldiers understood but poorly.

Dimly, Susan heard an irritable voice in the back of her mind. _You'll never win a war by saving all your enemies_. It sounded like the General. But even knowing they would soon return to the front to fight and kill her own countrymen, she could no more sit by and watch them suffer than if they were British soldiers. Or Narnians.

Susan could not afford to dwell on wartime ethics. She could only lose herself in her role so as not to give the game away too soon. That, and wait to be contacted so she could complete her mission.

The waiting was interminable.

One day Captain Deitrich himself returned bruised and bloody. Only when all his men had been treated did he allow her to cleanse and tend a nasty scrape on his temple where a bullet had grazed him. It was hard not to admire him for it.

To Susan, that made him even more dangerous.

The next day he accompanied her on her rounds, even into the heart of the town. He held a goat still while she splinted its broken leg, and he translated the profuse thanks of the family that owned it.

Still Susan had not heard from her contact.

The inaction was dulling her mind. That was the only explanation she had for why, when Captain Dietrich asked her to walk with him one evening, she assented without a second thought.

 

**Cair Paravel, 1014**

"I still do not like him," pronounced Lambert.

Susan frowned at her Guard. "He has been the very picture of courtesy," she chided. "And you cannot deny how much he helped us during the negotiations in Telmar."

"I cannot deny it."

"Or his selfless advice to me during that time."

The Wolf's ears twitched. "The advice was sound. I would not deem it selfless."

Susan and Lambert usually understood each other so well that they acted in perfect concert. But this day, she could not fathom the Wolf's objections. "Rabadash does not court me for my crown -- he has the promise of his own. Nor does he pursue me for my beauty. We speak of philosophers, of literature and matters of state, Lambert. He appeals to my mind, not my vanity!"

"As I have said before, my Queen, that is why he is dangerous."

Susan threw up her hands. "What would you have me do?"

"Even Beasts do not behave alike in field as in den, my Queen."

"You sound like Sallowpad."

Lambert bowed his head slightly, acknowledging the compliment. "Will you go to see him in  his own land?"

"I'm sure he is as wise and just in his own city as he has comported himself abroad," said Susan, and Lambert's ears flattened. "But I will see him in his own den, as you say, afore I judge him."

The Wolf's fur abruptly smoothed. "That is all I ask, my Queen."

"I would ask the same of you, Friend."

Lambert pressed his shoulder into her side in mute support. But as Queen and Guard watched the sun set over the Western Wood, each remained troubled and said nothing.

And so, three weeks later, Queen Susan of Narnia followed a Calormene prince into the desert.

 

**Tunisia, March 1943**

Susan knew Dietrich was suspicious of her. But his form of surveillance came uncomfortably close to courting.

They took to walking together in the evenings. There was an olive grove just outside the town. It had been decimated by previous battles, but a few gnarled trees remained. There they stood, Susan with her back against the tree and Captain Dietrich leaning his shoulder on a low branch, framed by leaves of dusty green.

They talked of strategy, of the Allies' advance and the shrinking Axis bridgehead around Tunis.

"The British and the Americans may not be shooting at each other, but they fight each other as surely as they fight us," scoffed Dietrich. "That is no way to run a war."

"And you despise the Italians even as you depend upon them," said Susan lightly, well aware that she was treading dangerous waters by entering this debate.

" _Touché_ ," said Dietrich with a smile. "And even Germans and Americans would join forces to fight the Arabs, because they are so foreign to us. Was that to be your next point?"

It sounded patronizing, but Susan wondered whether he had once done just that – fought alongside the Rat Patrol against a common enemy. She tried to change the subject. "I have seen how the British treat natives," she said. "And the Americans." Susan drew on the very real anger she felt when she'd heard the rumors. "Do you know what the Americans are paying the villagers when their tanks crush things?" She let her voice become shrill. It was not difficult. "25,000 francs for a dead camel. 15,000 for a dead boy. 10,000 for a dead donkey and only _500 francs_ for a little girl! It is a barbarity, Captain!"

To her surprise, he agreed with her. "We cannot change the world, _mademoiselle_ ," he said. "But here, in Azahara, the children have food." His hand brushed the small of her back, and some of the anger drained out of her.

Some, but not all. "It is wrong to wage war against a culture because it is different than ours."

"Do not say such things back at the camp," he warned softly.

Their eyes met briefly. Susan looked away.

 

They talked of ethics.

"I knew an S.S. officer who would have said that all is fair in war. I… disagreed with him on that point." A muscle in Dietrich's jaw clenched. Susan  watched it, fascinated. She waited for him to say more, to confirm the story the Rats had told her, but Dietrich was not such an impatient man as to fill the silence unnecessarily.

"What did you tell him?" she finally asked.

"That as a member of the S.S., he was supposed to have a sense of honor."

Susan's eyebrows rose.

"And I believe I mentioned something about his sanity as a human being," Dietrich continued nonchalantly, "but that is where I erred. The man was mad."

Susan paused, delicately sorting through the words she would like to say and all the things she should not. "Some would say hate is a form of madness."

"Rommel believed in a war without hate," said Dietrich. " _Krieg ohne Hass._ What do you think of that?"

"Is such a thing even possible?" Susan parried, deflecting the question back to the Captain.

He shrugged. "Without hate, there would be no war. But the battlefield in North Africa has been… cleaner than most."

"Someone once told me that battles are ugly," Susan said. "In any land," she added pointedly.

"Dispassionate, then," he said. "Here the Gestapo has little power. We fight for the man next to us, or out of duty to the Fatherland. Not for politics or hatred."

"It cannot last," said Susan. Dietrich gently touched her elbow and guided her back down the hill towards the town.

"Nothing does," he said.

 

**Tashbaan, 1014**

Rabadash smiled, his teeth starkly white against his dark skin. "Welcome, my dear Barbarian Queen." All around the audience chamber, the fawning viziers tittered.

As endearments went, it left something to be desired. But Susan let none of her discomfiture show on her face. She crossed the chamber to meet him, kept her gaze from wandering to the intricately carved walls or the gilded dome overhead.

He again took her hand and placed it on his elbow, and led her out of the chamber down a hallway lined with mirrors. She caught him glancing at their joint reflection as they passed.

Not for the first time, it occurred to her that Rabadash was a vain man. He was wearing a fine silk tunic and vest with gold brocade, and his sleeves were embroidered with peacock feathers. Pride in one's appearance and an appreciation of beauty were fine qualities, she told herself.

But his look of smug satisfaction as he beheld their joint reflection in the mirror stayed with her.

So did the tone of his voice as they walked through the palace gardens. At first his words flowed as smooth and dreamy as the water that trickled from tiered fountains to long, mirror-still pools. Susan felt her earlier edginess recede as they strolled underneath trellis archways draped with lush roses and plump hibiscus.

A memory struck Susan abruptly. "My lord," she said, turning eagerly to face him, "has this garden any of the wild desert flowers that grow pink like an early rose but have petals as thin as a lady's veil?"

He looked at her strangely. "A desert flower? There are no such common weeds in my father's garden, may he live to see a thousand springs."

Susan swallowed her disappointment. "Of course. I only wondered what they were called. I saw some on our journey to your father's great city." She refused to wish the Tisroc life forever; it was a foolish, vainglorious linguistic custom.

Rabadash did not seem to notice the slight; he snapped his fingers and a slave appeared out of the shadows and knelt before their feet. Susan's stomach clenched at the sight.

"Tell Her Barbarian Majesty the name of the pink desert weed that looks like a wrinkled woman," he commanded in a sharp voice.

"Blush-of-the-morning, O My Prince and may you give glory to your Father Tisroc and may he live forever."

Rabadash dismissed the slave halfway through the rote obsequity and turned away.

Susan smiled at the boy in thanks and followed Rabadash, who always contrived to be half a step ahead of her.

"Here," he said proudly at the next open courtyard, "is the Mirror of Hydrargyrus."

A shallow pool of mercury rippled before their feet, perfectly reflecting every cloud so that it seemed a piece of the sky rested on the ground. "Wondrous," breathed Susan. Then she frowned. "But do not the birds mistake it for water? What happens to them if they drink?"

Rabadash shrugged. "Then they die."

After that, Susan walked unseeing amid the cool green hedges, the music of the water, and the carvings adorning every wall and bench. The Gardens of the Tisroc suddenly felt like a greening cage.

 

By the end of the first day, she felt an ominous foreboding.

On the second day, she saw him step on the tail of a peacock with childish, malicious glee.

On the third day, he closed up the windows so the birdsong would not intrude upon their conference. When Susan asked with beguiling voice whether one window could not remain open, he snapped that, as the poets said, birds were like women – better seen than heard.

On the fourth day, he struck a slave. He had the temerity to bar her from going to the woman's aid, and when she would have lashed out at him with heated words, he turned a look on her so cold that the words died in her throat.

On the fifth day, she refused to see him.

On the sixth day, a scented letter arrived bearing her praises and scant words of apology. Susan left it on a silver tray and went out with young Corin to the marketplace to be among the people. Of course, the young scapegrace eluded her and the entire party spent the rest of the day searching for him. Preoccupied by the princeling's absence, she gave no further thought to Rabadash.

When Corin returned, dazed from the sun but none the worse for wear, Edmund confronted her with the full gravity of the situation. She could delude herself no longer: she would not marry Rabadash, as she told her brother, for all the gold in Tashbaan. But a growing fear in her heart whispered that she, her brother and their friends and the son of their dear friend King Lune, were like captive birds in a gilded cage.

And she had seen how Rabadash treated his birds.

 

**Tunisia, March 1943**

They spoke of dreams.

"I dream of a Lion," she told him. The darkness enfolding them gave her courage. She watched the stars in their slow orbit and wondered if any stars in this world knew how to sing.

"Hunting?"

"No. Singing."

He laughed softly. "I have been in Africa a long time. I have never seen a lion sing."

Susan hid her smile. "I did not say that _all_ lions sing."

Dietrich sat at the foot of the olive tree and stretched his long legs. "What does your lion sing about?"

"He is not _my_ Lion," she corrected. "He does not belong to anybody but Himself."

"And what does not-your-lion sing about?"

He was humoring her, Susan knew. It did not matter. "He does not sing in words. The melody is both sad and joyful." She had not discussed her dreams with anyone since Lambert. The words caught in her throat. "It is enough to make the stars weep."

Dietrich shifted against the tree trunk. "I dream of the woods," he said. "Of cool nights in the Black Forest, of trees so thick and close together you cannot see the path. Small things moving in the brush, unseen. Wolves howling in the distance."

"I would like to hear a wolf howl," Susan sighed.

"And I would like to hear a lion sing," came the almost playful rejoinder. "But here, all we have is the wind."

Still, when the wind moaned down the canyon to the south, Susan thought she heard the call of a wolf. And every night she dreamed of Aslan.

Except that night.

_She dreamed of a Rat creeping across the pitted stonework of a parapet. She came to the end of the wall and gazed out over nothingness: a long drop, and the desert waste. She gathered herself, ran to the edge and leaped – straight into the jaws of a wolf._

Susan awoke, heart pounding. The old fear of Maugrim's slavering jaws, snapping at her heals as she dangled from a tree – why should she think of that now? Was it her own fears or a warning from Aslan?

And what did it say about her state of mind that she could no longer tell?


	3. The Circle in the Sand

"Everything that ever happened to me that was important happened in the desert."

\- Michael Ondaatje, _The English Patient_

"Long ago, God drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing now. You were never not coming here. This was never not going to happen."

\- Rumi, 13th century Persian poet

 

 

**Tunisia, April 1943**

Dietrich now sought Susan out at every opportunity. They spoke of literature and philosophy. Dietrich spoke of his family, while Susan spoke only of a wolfhound she'd once had, who had been more friend than pet.

Once, they spoke of love.

"Do you have a husband?" he asked her idly.

Susan shook her head. " _Non_."

"A soldier then. Risking his life for his country with your photograph tucked in his pocket?"

Susan devoutly hoped that Tebbitt had more sense than to keep her photograph in his pocket. "I have a soldier, yes."

"Back in… France?" he guessed shrewdly.

Unnerved, Susan avoided the question. "I do not know where he has been sent."

"Ah. Of course, forgive me."

Susan's mouth was dry. How foolish she had been to let down her guard!

But Dietrich did not return to the subject. Instead he told her an astounding story of a dust storm, a German spy and an overturned truck. "Much like yours," he added with a sidelong look. He was a talented storyteller, and she gripped his arm when he told how the spy, who was posing as an Allied doctor, nearly killed Dietrich with a swift injection. "Sergeant Troy stopped him," he said.

Susan affected a puzzled expression. "Troy… Is he Italian? I do not know him."

Dietrich smiled sardonically. "Of course not. He is an American. One of the vermin I told you about. They call themselves the Rat Patrol."

"An American saved your life?" she asked in astonishment.

"Oh yes. He even left me a canteen of water."

Susan made appropriate noises of amazement. All the while her mind churned. Why was Dietrich telling her this story?

He stopped beneath a desiccated olive tree. " _Mademoiselle_ ," he began in a low voice. "Who are you waiting for?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Major Wilhelm Schmidt, perhaps?"

Susan's heart lodged in her throat. That was the name she had been given. "I do not know him." To her despair, her voice trembled.

"He was arrested and executed for treason."

Susan felt cold.

"Perhaps he was your contact," Dietrich suggested softly. "And you had information to sell."

Susan wrenched her arm free. "I do not know what you mean! I am only a nurse!"

"True," he mused. "A Frenchwoman who plays nurse to soldiers, goats and Arab women is clearly an idealist, not an opportunist. Perhaps he was not your buyer, but someone who would grant certain papers in exchange for… a favor?"

He knows, she thought wildly. Somehow Dietrich had found a connection between her and the unfortunate Schmidt. "He was my lover," she blurted.

"Love!" he scoffed. His dark, penetrating eyes held her gaze, and Susan found it difficult to breathe. "If you say such things about Major Schmidt, there are those who would think you did not even know the man."

Her life depended on it, and still Susan could not tell whether he was warning her or toying with her, like a cat before the kill.

"Enough. You may drop the act," he said in English. "It is well done, but useless."

" _Je ne comprends pas_."

"I quite agree. You do not understand." He stepped forward abruptly. Susan refused to take a step back, but she could not help trembling a little when he grasped her wrist. "So. The Rats are using women now?"

Susan knew she should not rise to the bait, but her legendary control was strained to the breaking point. "No one uses me," she said coolly in French. "I came from Casablanca–"

Again Dietrich interrupted her. "Yes, so you have said. Repeatedly. You fail to appreciate your position, _mademoiselle_." Not once, Susan realized, had he ever called her by name.

She might yet have a card to play. "I appreciate my position very well, Hans," she murmured, stressing his name. Surprise flared in his eyes, and she stepped even closer to him, ready to press her advantage.

"Hauptmann!" called a voice. A corporal came running and skidded to attention in front of them. "Hauptmann, _Komm schnell_!"

"Speak French," chided Dietrich. "The lady is present."

"A message, sir. Uncoded."

Dietrich glanced at the corporal, who swallowed and looked at his boots. He looked back at Susan. "Come with me."

Susan again gathered her dignity, wrapping it around her along with her shawl. She had no choice but to follow Dietrich back to the camp.

The telegraph tent was merely a canopy, and the operator little more than a boy. "Hauptmann, we intercepted a message!" he said excitedly in German.

"Let's hear it," was Dietrich's mild reply.

"Sir?" The boy glanced at Susan uncertainly.

Dietrich brushed the question away. "She is none of your concern. The message."

"ratspotswolfatstream," the boy recited dutifully.

Susan heard a roaring in her ears. She strove with all her being not to react. Many times before she had damned Edmund and his inscrutable code, but this was as clear as day. _Rat spots wolf at stream_. Wolf could only be her backup contact. _Stream_ was Lambert, a code name she had long ago assigned to her Guard when he refused to choose one himself.

Whoever this man was, Edmund was telling her to trust him implicitly.

_Spot_ meant nothing to her in Rat and Crow code. Susan could only surmise it meant some physical mark. Such things had weighed on Edmund's mind lately. He had confessed to worrying about Peter's friendship with Mary, an Englishwoman who closely resembled a Dryad they had known in Narnia – and whom Peter had known better than anyone. Edmund had devoted a good deal of time (entirely too much time, in Susan's opinion) to analyzing the physical parallels and speculating about whether Mary would have a birthmark to match the Dryad's distinctive knothole.

Edmund was almost certainly drawing the same parallel here. The knothole in question had been low on Dinan's trunk, chest-high on a human. If Susan's suspicions were correct, that meant she needed to see Dietrich with his shirt off.

Tash take it all. Susan _hated_ the desert.

 

**Tashbaan, 1014**

For one horrible moment, Susan was paralyzed with fear. Her mind swirled with possible futures: instead of securing her country's future, she had destroyed it; she would be held captive in this miserable, joyless city; Rabadash would cut off her brother's head and condemn her friends to a life of slavery. And it was all because of her folly.

But then Tumnus suggested a ruse – and what a ruse! – that Sallowpad himself approved of. The sparkle came back into Edmund's eye, and only then did Susan realize how pinched with worry he had been … and for how long. He began plotting and planning with customary zeal, and Susan was bitterly ashamed of her own reaction.

She buried her shock and hurt and dismay, instead taking over the preparations with a firm hand on the reins. She wrote a message to Rabadash in her own hand and flowery language woven with a thread of resignation that would be sure to catch his eye.

She, too, could lay traps.

She arranged for wine and wine-bearers, melons and almonds and a bevy of roast fowl. She sketched a beautiful thrush perched upon a branch and charged Tumnus with delivering it to the ice-carver. It would be an elaborate and costly sculpture, and the expense was bound to come to Rabadash's attention.

Messages delivered, Susan took a moment to compose herself. Edmund nudged her elbow. "We've been in worse scrapes," he said. "And don't say a word about poor judgment – I still lay claim to that."

Susan shook her head. "I was so blind," she whispered. "The way he treated me, as an equal – I never expected deception from that quarter."

"Hope and love are like that, Su. It is only when one expects to be deceived, that it is easy to find the proof of it." Edmund absolved her gently, which only stung more.

"I was _not_ in love with him."

He nodded. "I know. But the idea of love is powerful. And it's not any easier to lose than the real thing."

Susan laid her head on her brother's shoulder and stifled her tears. There would be time enough for that later, if they escaped.

 

**Tunisia, April 1943**

Dietrich led her into his own tent. He set his hat on a wooden crate that seemed to serve as both table and chair. He let the flap fall shut, and Susan was intently aware of the knife tucked up her sleeve.

The wind howled outside.

"What did the message say?" Dietrich asked in a low voice.

Susan drew her knife. "Take off your shirt," she commanded.

Whatever he was expecting her to say, it was not that. He raised one eyebrow in a gesture eerily reminiscent of Lambert.

"Take off your shirt," she repeated. Edmund's code _had_ to have meant Dietrich.

Aslan help her if she was wrong. 

This time Dietrich obeyed. He folded his jacket neatly and placed it on the table, followed by his shirt. "Is this what you are looking for?" Even in the lamplight, Susan could see the newly healed scar on his right shoulder. It looked like a bullet wound. The new skin was still pink. 

Still, scars could be faked.

She walked up to him, knife at the ready. She placed her hand on his bare chest and ran her fingers over the scar.

The flesh, though marred, was warm. It was no trick of cosmetics. Skin could not lie.

"You?" Susan whispered, her hand still on his chest. "All this time, it was you."

Dietrich looked down at her. "Dr. Livingston, as you say," he said sardonically.

"But…" Her voice faltered. "The Rats don't know, do they?"

He shook his head. "No. And you must not tell them."

"They could kill you. They might have killed you at any time." Belatedly, she let her hand fall and stepped back. "Or you might have killed them." The thought was beyond disturbing. How could the SOE put anyone in that position?

"It is a possibility, yes. Though I doubt Sergeant Troy would kill me deliberately unless he had good reason."

_That_ was hardly reassuring.

Dietrich plucked her knife from nerveless fingers and set it on the table next to his cap and goggles. "You are from England?"

"France."

"Indeed. And your soldier, the one you said is waiting for you – he is also from England?"

" _France_."

He had the gall to smirk. "Of course. Forgive me." Dietrich reached for her hand. Bemused, Susan let him lead her to the bedroll. When he pulled her down next to him, Susan stiffened. "You misunderstand me, I think." He sounded amused. " _This_ is for my men."

"Keeping their spirits up?" she asked sourly.

"In case they should wonder about your presence in my tent and the purpose of it. This is the story you had arranged with Schmidt, is it not?"

_Not by my choice_. Aloud, Susan answered, "The story has changed, Captain. You cannot propose to take his place."

His lips twitched. "You only protest because you never saw Schmidt. He was a round little mouse of a man."

"I have known some valiant Mice." Let him think she was talking about the Rat Patrol. For Reepicheep's sake, she could never let that slight go unchallenged.

"Not this one. He was driven only by greed, a coward with the physique of a glutton and a sloth. Four deadly sins in a rather uninspiring package, I'm afraid." He put his arm around her shoulders in a languid motion.

Susan arched an eyebrow. "And you are favorable by comparison? Not the most compelling argument, Captain."

There was something wolfish about his smile. "If you say so." He tucked a blanket around her and withdrew his hand from her shoulder. "Now," he said, "for our other misunderstanding."

The smile left his face. "I have been, until quite recently, a loyal German officer. I pursued Sergeant Troy and his Rats whole-heartedly, and would willingly have killed them in combat. I came quite close on several occasions." When she would struggle, he grasped Susan's wrists firmly. "We have had our moments of truce, yes, but my first concern has always been for the lives of my men. You must understand that."

Susan could hardly breathe. Had she erred one last, fatal time? Did she place her trust in the wrong man? _Again_?

"But recently I have become aware that there is a… a cancer in my country. From the Gestapo, the S.S. and the High Command to the lowest ranks of soldiers who carry out barbarous acts and defend them as _just following orders_ … This I cannot stomach. The desert has been – had been – a cleaner place, with none of the depravity of Europe. Or so I thought."

His heavy eyebrows lowered, and Susan studied his face in fascination. He was so young, but the lines of war were already etched on his brow.

"Now I see that the lines were always drawn only in sand. They are blown away in the wind and redrawn again and again. And I shall go no further."

Susan touched his cheek gently. "You are a good man," she whispered.

"There are no good men in war." His voice was bitter.

"You're wrong." Susan said firmly. "I have known noble soldiers. I believe you are one of them."

"Noble for betraying my country?" His mouth twisted.

"For trying to save it," she corrected gently.

They spoke in whispers late into the night.

It reminded Susan of late nights spent plotting with Edmund, ensconced in the library while their Guards alternately drowsed and listened with perked ears. To Susan's delight, the German Captain had an even more devious mind than she'd suspected. Susan told Dietrich of her original cover story, and a pained expression crossed his face. "It is a wonder you have not already lost the war," he muttered.

He asked about her family in England, and though she gave him no details that would compromise her brothers and sister, she no longer denied where she was from. They each knew too much about the other, now. Edmund might have called it _mutually assured destruction_.

Susan called it faith.

Eventually she slept, more deeply than she had since England – possibly since Narnia. There was something solid and reassuring about his presence at her back. It was not the same as having her Guard with her. But it was familiar all the same.

Again, she dreamed.

_She dreamed of a Rat creeping across the pitted stonework of a parapet. She came to the end of the wall and gazed out over nothingness: a long drop, and the desert waste. She gathered herself, ran to the edge and leaped – straight into the jaws of a Wolf. He cradled her in those deadly jaws, carrying her as gently as a pup. Together, they vanished into the night._

 

Hauptmann Dietrich had watched her face carefully when the intercepted message came in, certain it would contain some hint of the British spy's intentions. Instead he had seen shock, even wonderment. He could only guess at what those inscrutable words had told her to put such an expression on her face.

Then she had pulled a knife on him and ordered him to take off his shirt. And when she'd looked at him with shining eyes, he knew.

Through some blunder of British intelligence, she thought _he_ was a spy.

_Her_ spy.

Even as the clinical, strategic part of his mind began spinning lies to ensnare her further, a quieter part of him despaired at the dawning trust on her face. Unwise, unmerited.

Dietrich was a soldier, and a good one, despite his many losses to the Rat Patrol. But he was no one's spy.

The words he told her carried perhaps more truth than he would like to admit. He channeled his most private thoughts and conflicting emotions into his story. His distaste for the conduct of some German officers. The mutual respect and twisted admiration he and Sergeant Troy shared across the battlefield. The bitterness and regret of losing men under his command, all for a few kilometers – or mere meters – of barren land.

The story he told her was a lie. But in the darkness, Dietrich remembered all the times he had spared Troy and his men – and been spared in return. The times he had confronted his fellow and even superior officers over their deplorable treatment of prisoners or natives. The compromises he had made, sacrificing materiel and objectives in order to keep men alive just one more day.

The S.S. officer he had shot to save a woman. And Moffitt.

In truth, Dietrich had been walking a fine line for a long time. "Now I see that the lines were always drawn only in sand," he found himself saying. "And I shall go no further."

And he wondered which of them he was trying to deceive.

As they laid side by side, the woman shared all manner of secrets she should not have told him. He did not even have to wrestle with his conscience over what questions to ask her; she spoke freely. Oh, she held a few things back – her true name, identity, nationality – though he could guess at that. Alarmingly, she stopped correcting him to _France_ whenever he mentioned England.

The cold-hearted British bastards had sent a lamb to slaughter.

She curled into his side and slept, her chest rising and falling and the lines easing from her face. She had called him a good man.

Dietrich did not want her trust.

It was too much like the trust of the men under his command, so many of whom fought and bled on the desert sands and died still trusting him.

His mouth twisted in a grimace. His duty was clear. He may not like it or want it, but he was a soldier. In some things, there was no room for compromise.

He would do what he must.

 

When Susan awoke, Dietrich was already dressed and pulling on his boots. "There is fruit on the desk," he said. "And water."

Susan perched on the edge of his desk and ran her fingers over the things there: a handsome ivory-handled letter opener and matching pen, his cap and goggles, a small wooden bird. She picked up the bird and turned it over in her hands. Its breast was carved with little cross-hatched feathers, and the wings were folded tightly to its sides. It was either very old or had been handled very often; the wood was worn to a dull shine.

"This reminds me of home," said Susan wistfully. "Is it a sparrow?"

He combed his hair, parting it neatly on the side. "It is the _sprosser_ ," said Dietrich, nodding to the bird in her hands. "I believe you call it the thrush nightingale."

"You have an interest in birds?"

Dietrich cupped her hand in his own, lightly touching the bird's back. "I spent much of my time in the woods as a boy. The _sprosser_ winters in Africa, but I have never seen one here." The look in his eyes was tender, almost sorrowful. Susan thought she understood.

He raised his eyes to her face. "But it is time to speak of other things," he said, not without a trace of regret in his voice.

"I agree." Susan gently placed the little wooden bird back on the desk. "Without Schmidt, we will need a different way to convey the information."

"What is this information?"

Susan did not hesitate. "Tidal charts for an invasion of Sicily."

His eyebrows rose. "False, I presume? No, there is no need to tell me. I can guess well enough. Such an obvious ploy – forgive me, my dear – can only be designed to draw the eye toward another target." His voice grew distant. "To trick us into sending our forces safely out of the way, instead of reinforcing the real target."

There was no point in denying it. "The question is," said Susan, "how to get that information into the proper channels."

Dietrich studied her. "I will take care of it."

"But how?" Susan pressed.

He frowned. "You should be more concerned with how we will get you out of here safely."

Again with this tedious business of keeping her safe! "War is not safe, Hauptmann," she said stiffly.

Dietrich blew out a breath in exasperation. "Very well. I will conscientiously report to my superiors that I have met a British spy attempting to gain access to a certain Major Schmidt, known traitor to the Reich. I allowed her to seduce me, and she departed none the wiser, believing her mission accomplished. There. Are you satisfied?"

If he was hoping to embarrass her, thought Susan, he would be disappointed. Narnians did not embarrass easily.

Queens, even less so. "And how will you obtain the information without Schmidt? Am I to be so smitten with you that I simply hand it over?" Her voice came out more caustic than she meant it to be.

Dietrich remained calm – so much so that she almost found it infuriating. "You are trying to deliver the information to Germany, yes? Your very eagerness to deliver the plans into my hands helps prove their falsehood. That is the point, is it not?"

A deafening boom drowned out her reply. Susan paled. Dietrich spun and ran out of the tent before she could ask any questions.

She had never planned for this.

It seemed an hour before he returned. His face was grim. "Our forces are in full retreat at Wadi Akarit." The lines around Dietrich's mouth tightened. "We are to flee north through the Eastern Dorsal to Tunis." He turned to her and grasped her shoulders. "I must get you out of here. Now."

Susan squinted up at him, trying to memorize the strong lines of his face. "We still have work to do."

His grip tightened. "I have already written the dispatch. All I need is the paper you carry."

Susan unbuttoned her shirt. Dietrich turned away, and she smirked as she pulled the paper from underneath her bra strap.

"Here." She held out the false plans.

His face was impassive as he tucked the paper in his pocket, but Susan could have sworn a faint blush deepened the color of his cheekbones. His voice, however, was cool. "Do you have a way to signal the Rat Patrol?"

She smiled wryly. "I was supposed to blow something up."

"Yes, that does sound like Sergeant Troy. That would indeed make you a true Rat. But I trust the shelling will suffice." He pulled one flap of the tent open. The town was already emptying: villagers with bundles of precious belongings were fleeing on mules, on camels, on foot. Soldiers hurried purposefully, packing valuable equipment and burning what could not be taken.

Susan noticed with approval that there was little looting under Dietrich's command. It would have been unwise of her to leave the shelter of the tent to harangue the soldiers in French.

"Will you give me your name?"

The question took her by surprise. His voice sounded uncommonly tentative. "You already have the truest name I could give you," she whispered.

For the first time, Dietrich's smile was wide, almost boyish. "Very well, _mademoiselle_ Rat."

She shouldn't say anything more. But she could not bring herself to leave it at that. "If you ever need them to trust you, if there is no time and no other recourse – I will give you a code word."

"From London?"

She shook her head. "Of my own. I will tell the Rats…" she faltered. "I will tell them if someone approaches using the word _thrush_ and my name, that they should trust him as if it were me." For so long, that word had held a hidden, bitter meaning for her. Dietrich had changed that.

Susan had never changed a word of her personal Rat and Crow code for anyone before.

Dietrich inclined his head, taking her confession for the gift that it was. "What does _stream_ mean to you?" he asked.

She had wondered when he would finally give in to his curiosity. He must have been puzzling over that word since the original transmission telling Susan to trust him as her own Guard. "It is where I first placed my trust in a dear friend," Susan confessed. "You remind me of him."

Dietrich arched an eyebrow. "Then it is a great deal of trust indeed that you place in me, _mademoiselle_. But tell me, how am I to give them your name if I do not know it?"

"They know me as Régine."

"Ah." He did not sound surprised, or even disappointed. But he turned away, hands clasped behind his back, to study the still empty horizon.

All her previous deserts, all her experiences and past failures, all her training, names and lives had led her to this place.

A hundred voices in the back of her mind screamed at her to say nothing more. Only one voice whispered her name. _Susan_. It was a distant rumble like thunder before a sweet spring rain.

This time, there was no doubt in her mind. _I hear you, Aslan._ She held her head high.

"I am Susan."

 

Tully had his helmet on and the engine running almost before Moffitt finished decoding the transmission. "The Eighth Army is on its way – and so are the Americans. Troy, we've got to get her out of there."

"Before she's shot as a German spy," Troy finished. "Dietrich won't make a stand, he's too smart for that. Let's hope he leaves her somewhere we can find her."

They did not have far to go, but the shale-covered ridge would be slow to climb. "Wait here for me. I'm going to have a look around." All they had to do, Troy thought, was stay out of the way of friendly fire, out of the way of the retreating Germans, and find a single woman in the middle of an evacuating town. "Just like Miami," he muttered to himself.

 

Dietrich saw the first plumes of fire and smoke on the horizon. "It is springtime in the desert," he said. The irony was staggering.

"April is the cruelest month," whispered Susan in English.

Dietrich gave her a sharp look, but no one else was near enough to hear. "I have seen poppies spread across the fields like blood." His voice was distant. "Today the poppies will be cut down by artillery, along with many men."

"And we can't stop it." Her voice was thick with unshed tears.

"Not today." He stood behind her, close enough to hear the hitch in her breathing. It was a mark of her faith in him that she did not even turn at his approach. "Susan," he started to say, and then broke off. He raised his hand to caress her hair, just once. Before she could turn towards him with questions on her lips, he raised his other hand.

She crumpled soundlessly at the blow.

Dietrich shut the tent flap. He carried her to the cot and checked her pulse. He donned his cap, goggles still perched on the brim, and stopped only to snatch his copy of _Mein Kampf_ off his desk. He did not think she would have looked in there, and indeed the dispatch was still where he had scribbled it on the title page. He tore it out with a small smile of satisfaction.

He crossed the camp at a run. Already shells were bursting in the fields just outside of Azahara. One stubborn goatherd was doggedly trying to gather his flock and steer them away from the minefield. More goats scattered with every explosion, Dietrich noted, but most were following the man to safety.

Dietrich entered the communications tent, where the men were frantically ripping out wires and stuffing papers into a fire. They would do better to feed them to the goats, he thought. "You two!" he snapped at the youngest pair of soldiers. One boy had a patch of stubble on his chin. "Take this to General Von Arnim with all haste. Don't come back – we're pulling out."

He watched them speed away and nodded to himself. Two more lives saved, at least for the moment.

It would have to be enough.

 

Troy lay on his stomach on top of a ridge. The earth spread out in folds below him, running down the hillside to the foot of the village. Binoculars pressed to his eyes, he scanned for any sign of Régine. He could already hear the artillery fire in the distance – time was running short. "Come on," he muttered.

He spotted Dietrich's distinctive stride. The German captain paused in front of a tent and looked up, almost straight at Troy. There was no way Dietrich could see him from there, and yet…

Troy watched Dietrich a moment longer. Then he scrambled back down the ridge and jumped up beside Hitch.

"Did you see her?" Moffitt pulled his goggles over his eyes.

"No. But I have a feeling."

"A feeling?" Moffitt smiled. "The woman was with us less than twenty-four hours, and the man has a feeling."

Hitch put the jeep in gear. "That's good enough for me. Are we going in, Sarge?"

Troy slapped Hitch on the back. "You bet we are. Tully, you and Moffitt go around to the south – and be ready to blow something up as a distraction."

"It would be a pleasure," said Moffitt with a grin. "What's my cue?"

"Listen for someone yelling 'The British are coming,'" said Troy. "Let's shake it!"

 

Dietrich stared up at the ridge for a full minute. That was where he would hide, if he were scouting the village. Finally he could wait no longer. He strode back into his tent, stopping only to upbraid a trio of young soldiers lugging a _piano_ of all things. Dietrich did not tolerate thievery, and he could not abide stupidity.

The fact that Susan would have been appalled at the looting was entirely irrelevant.

She was still on the cot, still unconscious. He scrounged for a cloth, soaked it in water and wiped her face. Then he saw to his own preparations: emptying his desk, briskly separating important files from papers to be burned, saving his field book of European birds and leaving the torn copy of _Mein Kampf_ where it fell on the ground.

The percussive shelling outside was punctuated with a few staccato bursts of gunfire. "That would be your ride, my dear," he murmured aloud. He picked up the little wooden bird from his desk and tucked it in her pocket.

It was a poor gift in return for what she had given him.

It would have to be enough.

"Hands up, Captain," a familiar voice warned.

Dietrich looked up to see Troy in the doorway, his gun raised. Dietrich took an obedient step backward and showed his empty hands. "You're late, Sergeant," he said.

Troy let the tent flap close behind him. Somewhere in the town, an alarm sounded.

"That would be Moffitt, I trust?"

Troy gestured at Susan's prone body. "What did you do to her?" he asked angrily.

Dietrich shook his head. _Not what you think._ "I did not interrogate her." The impossible woman had a talent for making his life difficult, he thought, even when unconscious. "But I know she is a spy. You must get her out."

Even despite their complicated shared history, this left Troy speechless.

The shells were falling closer, Susan was beginning to stir, and Dietrich was losing his composure. "Don't you understand? Berlin has the information. The mission is over, Sergeant, now get her _out_!"

Troy nodded sharply. There would be no time for explanations – or for goodbyes. With a last wary look at Dietrich, he picked Susan's body up and backed out of the tent to the jeep waiting outside. He tossed Susan unceremoniously into the back and climbed in after her.

Then Troy looked back to where Dietrich stood, and he hesitated. "There's room for one more."

Hitch's shoulders jerked with surprise, but he said nothing.

Dietrich inclined his head and met the American's gaze squarely. "Perhaps another time, Sergeant."

"Another time, then." Troy saluted the German officer.

Susan opened her eyes, and her unfocused gaze found Dietrich's face for only a moment before the jeep sped off in a cloud of dust. 

Dietrich allowed himself a deep breath. "Another time," he repeated. Then he turned his back on the desert and set his mind to the task of organizing the evacuation and repairing whatever chaos the Rats had caused during their escape.

 

Troy watched the plane take off with Régine Dubois aboard. She had been remarkably composed, all things considered. She had thanked them almost regally, like something out of a storybook. But it was her parting words that had him wondering. _If the thrush calls my name, follow him._

The British sure loved their code words.

"Still thinking?" asked Moffitt.

Grinning, Troy shot back at him, "What do you think?"

"I think we probably owe Dietrich another bottle of champagne."

Walking back to the jeeps, the two men heard snatches of conversation. Hitch and Tully – arguing over a girl, most likely. No prize for guessing which girl.

"And then she kissed me!" Hitch said.

"She did, huh?" Troy and Moffitt exchanged a look of tolerant amusement.

 "Where did she kiss you, exactly?" drawled Moffitt.

"Right here by the jeep – oh. You mean where… well, right here!" Hitch pointed emphatically at the corner of his mouth. "And she said she'd miss me most of all."

Tully guffawed.

"Really." Troy raised his eyebrows.

"Who was there, Sarge, you or me?"

Tully elbowed Hitch in the side. "Guess that makes you the Scarecrow. If you only had a brain…"

"Oh yeah, and who're you supposed to be?"

Troy cut the chatter short. There was still work to be done, after all. "Let's shake it, Dorothy. It's time to get back to Kansas."

The jeeps roared back into the hills under a cloudless sky.

 

**London, April 1943**

Major al-Masri did not come to the airfield to collect Susan. It was Asim bin Kalil, dressed in a flowing robe without any military insignia, who presented himself at the airbase with a car, a ration of petrol, and half a chocolate bar.

Despite her fatigue, Susan was curious about this facet of her mentor. She had rarely had the opportunity to speak with Asim. They avoided all talk of her mission and passed the journey speaking of his travels in Africa before the war. It was a delight to hear of something other than sand and bombs, but they both felt the weight of the unspoken.

Not long after they lapsed into silence, Asim turned off the road and parked in a field.

"Are we out of petrol?" asked Susan in disbelief.

"I must tell you something before your debriefing." Asim faced her squarely. "The SOE has no operatives in Azahara, or anywhere else in the region. Aside from the late Major Schmidt, of course."

Susan stared at him dumbly. "But Hauptmann Dietrich – you told me about him. He helped me."

"He is not a double agent."

"But the message – " Susan broke off, trying to fit the pieces together. He could not possibly be saying what she thought he was saying. Her eyes narrowed. "The message said to find the man with a mark, a scar on his chest and to trust him implicitly."

Asim nodded. "I sent that message. Your brother helped me with the wording."

Edmund was part of this? Susan felt her throat constrict. "Are you saying it was all a lie?"

"I had a dream." If not for what Peter had told her about the man, it would seem utterly nonsensical. Asim's voice was quiet, his cadence that of a Calormene storyteller. "I dreamt of desert, of a rat running along a narrow ledge. She traveled in darkness. Enemies thronged about her but her footing was sure. The rat ran to the edge of the parapet and leaped into the jaws of a wolf. This wolf, though fearsome, was not an enemy. He bore a scar on his shoulder and the light of the God-touched in his eye. In my dream, he carried the rat to safety."

It was identical to the dream that had haunted her since she first set foot in the Tunisian desert. "And I was the rat," said Susan dully.

Asim bowed his head. "I did not know what face the wolf would wear. But my dream was true. Your brother Edmund believed the dream was true."

Susan did not doubt his word or the truth of his dream. Nor did she doubt her brother's judgment. He had surely felt the Lion's paw in this, and sought to reassure her by using Lambert's name in Rat and Crow. _Stream_. The place where her Guard had pledged his eternal loyalty to her, the place where she had entrusted her life to a Wolf.

And Asim had blurred the lines of his own carefully balanced identities to send her this warning out of a dream. Had conspired with her brother to manipulate her into trusting the wrong man. _Again_.

Dietrich, the German soldier who had pretended to be a spy.

He had betrayed her.

He had saved her.

Somewhere in that impossible contradiction was the truth. A single grain of truth in a desert of doubt. _Aslan, what does it mean?_

It began to rain, a gentle, cooling mist that settled on her hair and eyelashes like snow. Yet Susan could still feel the sun's heat radiating from her burned skin.

All around them, the birds chirped in the field.

 

At Bletchley, Asim changed into his uniform and was once more the Major al-Masri she knew. If indeed she knew him at all.

"There is something else I thought you should know," said the Major. He handed her a slip of paper. "It is a copy of a dispatch received by General von Arnim. It was sent on to Tunis, and from there to the German High Command."

_Sir,_

_I regret to inform you that a British spy by the name of Régine Dubois was killed at Azahara in an attempt to escape. However, prior to her death I was able to obtain valuable intelligence for the Third Reich. Under subtle interrogation, the prisoner took great pains to convince me that an attack on Sicily was imminent. As evidence, she provided me with partial battle plans (enclosed) stolen from an American officer in Casablanca._

_I believe this information to be false. Furthermore, I respectfully urge great caution with regard to similar information, as the British have undoubtedly employed more than one spy in this campaign._

_A copy of my full report is enclosed._

_Respectfully,_

_Hauptmann Hans Dietrich_

_Army Group Afrika_

 

Susan read the words three times.

She had thought she understood why he betrayed her confidence only to save her life. But knowing now that he had never been an Allied agent, why had he then completed her mission?

Susan recalled the private anguish Dietrich had shared with her at the senseless loss of life inherent in war. Belatedly, she recognized in his dissembling her own trick of telling a lie built on deeper truths.

"There is one more thing," said al-Masri. "We received this message, uncoded, from an abandoned station near Fondouk."

_thrushratstream_

Thrush. Rat. Stream. It was not proper code, thought Susan distantly. But it was enough.

Susan gathered herself. "Thank you, Major," she said.

Al-Masri's knowing gaze made Susan shift uncomfortably. "There is also this. It has been thoroughly examined. You may keep it," he added, handing her the carved wooden bird. "If I may ask… where did you get it?"

Susan cupped the little wooden thrush protectively in her hands. "From a friend," she said. Her voice was clear and steady. "A friend whom I met in the desert."

* * *

**Epilogue**

"Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone." - Jorge Luis Borges

 

**Egypt, 1950**

Against all odds, they met again.

He found her at an outdoor café in Cairo and stood between her and the sun, so all she could see was his silhouette against the glare. "I thought you hated the desert, _mademoiselle_ ," he said, and then she knew him.

After a moment, Susan found her voice. "I thought the air might be cleaner here."

Dietrich looked down at the table, smudged with dust. "I believe I know what you mean." He sat down beside her.

"Why did you come back?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"Germany was … not as I had left it." His words were carefully neutral, but she could hear the pain beneath them.

Susan knew something of that, of returning only to find everything changed, loved ones gone, home in ruins… She could still remember the blackened shells of bombed out houses in London, the pale crumbling stone of Cair Paravel choked with weeds. And a graveyard with her surname on five new headstones. _Beloved brother, sister, mother, father_.

Haltingly, Susan told him everything. The train accident, the subsequent months of holding together the shreds of her very self, the endless meaningless tasks she undertook merely to keep herself occupied.

She did not tell him of the morning she had looked in the mirror, seen her own red-rimmed eyes and recognized the desperate gaze of a tormented Minotaur from an age ago and a world that no longer existed. If ever she had wondered what had led him to such despair, now she knew.

In that moment, something within her soul had rebelled.

"So I packed my bags and left," she said. She had been meticulous out of habit. "Before I realized it, I'd even packed a hat for my brother Peter." Her voice hardly trembled when she said his name. "I brought it anyway. He loved the desert."

Dietrich covered her clenched hands with his own. His fingers were scratched and dusty, just as she remembered them. "Is that why you came here? Because your brother loved the desert?"

"No." Her voice came out as a whisper. How could she tell him that she returned to the desert because here, she could be nobody? Susan did not know what of herself was left now that she was no longer a sister or a queen.

Just as Dietrich was neither soldier nor spy.

"I came because I am lost," she said, "like Ariadne without her ball of twine." She did not stop to think whether he would know the reference.

Once more, Dietrich surprised her. "You would not be Ariadne." At her questioning look, he elaborated. "You have no need of Theseus – you would simply slay the Minotaur yourself."

Again Susan found herself lost for words.

"And your soldier back in England?"

"He is there, and I am here." Susan struggled to explain. "He loves me. And perhaps someday… But for now, there is no space in my heart for love."

"I see." His eyes sought hers. "There is a good deal of space in the desert."

She deliberately ignored his meaning. "And very little else," she said dryly.

Dietrich stood, stretched, and offered his hand. "I would not say that. I am working on a dig only three hours' ride from here."

"You, an archaeologist?"

He shrugged. "Moffitt suggested it might suit me."

"Moffitt?" Susan echoed. " _Sergeant_ Jack Moffitt of the Rat Patrol?"

Dietrich nodded, clearly amused. "He is currently hunting fossils somewhere in Morocco, I believe."

"Moffitt gave you career advice. And you followed it."

He nodded amiably. "Yes. I have found it most rewarding."

The world had turned on its head. There was no other explanation.

"Lately I have found a small statue of a jackal and several relief carvings," Dietrich continued. "There are no Minotaurs, but I have seen a man with the head of a crocodile."

Susan felt a faint stirring of interest. "A crocodile?"

"I'll wager that is something even you have never seen." His voice was smug, but his smile was kind. He raised one eyebrow. "Will you join me for a ride, Mademoiselle Susan of the Rats?"

Susan took his hand and rose to her feet. "That depends on the mode of transportation, _mon capitaine_."

"Jeep?" His eyes laughed at her.

She fought to keep her face straight. "No jeeps."

"Camel?"

"Absolutely no camels."

"Horses, then."

Susan smiled at him. For the first time in almost a year, she felt the warmth of the sun on her cheeks. "Only if I get my own horse."

Dietrich laughed aloud. She marveled at the change in him. "Whatever you wish," he promised.

And so Susan followed Dietrich into the desert.

 

She rode alongside him with ease, as if they had been on this journey together for years instead of hours.

"The desert is not a gentle place," said Dietrich into the stillness.

"I know." Susan was not looking for gentleness.

They said nothing more for a long time.

" _Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant_ ," quoted Dietrich, again breaking the silence.

"They make a desert and call it peace," Susan translated. Dietrich looked at her in surprise. "They do teach us Latin in school, you know."

"And here they taught us you English were barbarians," he said in a dry voice.

It surprised Susan into laughing, which earned her a rare smile in return. "You have found peace here," she said in wonderment. "Haven't you."

Dietrich looked at the horizon thoughtfully. "Perhaps."

Susan followed his gaze. Between her horse's pricked ears, she saw a trackless expanse of sand. Here, the only walls had long ago crumbled … the only paths were obliterated by wind, sand and time.

Memories swirled up like dust and dissipated just as quickly on the wind. If a soldier could find peace out here amid the scrub and the shale, perhaps some measure of it might find her as well.

Perhaps, she thought, the desert was everything Peter had said it was, after all.

Perhaps it was time to find out for herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Axis forces in North Africa surrendered on May 13, 1943. On the same day, it was reported that Operation Mincemeat "was swallowed whole." Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, began July 9. Apparently the Germans remained so convinced this was a feint that for 2 weeks they kept the majority of their forces concentrated in Sardinia and Greece. 
> 
> From January to March of 1943, French authorities inoculated over 30,000 people in North Africa to combat typhus. The "rule of threes" incident with Dietrich and the immunizations took place during the Rat Patrol episode "The Decoy Raid" sometime during this real-life window. As for Dietrich himself, I actually think he makes a more compelling character as originally written during the show: a loyal German officer who walks a fine line making his occasional truces with the Rats, adhering to his principles without betraying his country. But I love his character so much that I just couldn't resist making him a central piece of this story anyway!
> 
> The village of Azahara is fictional. I tried to situate it roughly behind German lines during the months of March and April, 1943. The name derives from a medieval palace called Medina Azahara – literally, the Shining City. 
> 
> My main sources for background research were Operation Mincemeat by Ben McIntyre and Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson. (I also spent entirely too much time watching reruns of Rat Patrol, though by no means am I an expert in the fandom any more than I am on WWII.) I have tried to keep the timelines intact in terms of the real world, as well as with respect to Rthstewart's Stone Gryphon series and Rat Patrol episodes as mapped by Sun Compass on "Dating the Rats" (http://www.fandom.tv/suncompass/dating_the_rats.htm). I may have fudged things a bit here and there, but any outright historical or geographical errors are inadvertent and entirely my own!


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